IT opportunities abound as worldwide firms increase cybersecurity funding

By the year 2020, it has been projected that businesses across the globe will be spending as much as $101.6 billion in an effort to safeguard their customer data and software from hackers, according to research released by International Data Corporation (IDC).

That number represents a 38 percent increase from the projected $73.7 billion to be spent on cybersecurity costs for the current year.  And the primary reason for the increased spending is simply fear of being hacked.

The release did not break down the spending categories for 2020, but instead analyzed the projected costs for 2016.  The largest portion of the spending for this year, nearly 45 percent, will be focused on security-related services, including consulting services, integration services, managed security services, education, and training.

Of that number, the largest investment will be in managed security services, expected to generate about $13 billion alone.  Investments in security software will be the second largest expense, with one of the fastest growing segments to be user behavior analytics software.

The highest-spending economic sector in cybersecurity in 2016 will be the banking industry, with a projected $8.6 billion in investment costs.  The next are discrete manufacturing, federal or central government, and process manufacturing.  These four sectors will record approximately 37 percent of all worldwide security revenues, and they are projected to remain the top spenders for the next five-year period.

Sean Pike, program vice president for Security Products, said in a report on Fortune.com, “Today’s security climate is such that enterprises fear becoming victims of the next major cyberattack or cyber extortion.  As a result, security has become heavily scrutinized by boards of directors demanding that security budgets are used wisely and solutions operate at peak efficiency.”

The United States is expected to spend $31.5 billion in security-related spending for the year, and the man-power to provide the programming, software and hardware is sure to be increasing significantly over the next few years, as all major industries look to secure their customers’ data and internal information from hacking attacks.